1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and method, and a program and a recording medium for the same. In particular, the invention relates to an information processing apparatus and method which allow desired data to be efficiently extracted in various types of electronic equipment and to a program and a recording medium for the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, it is becoming easier to record a large amount of contents as a result of the spread of HDD (Hard Disk Drive) recorders, for example. Further, in order to allow a user to view a large amount of recorded contents efficiently when the contents are reproduced, the detection of metadata is carried out to identify, for example, a scene satisfying a preset condition among the contents.
In a process of extracting metadata from temporally continuous data such as data of broadcasted contents, it is important to detect changes occurring on a time axis in a quantity such as a predetermined characteristic quantity detected from input data. For this purpose, it is necessary to refer to past data on the time axis and to compare the data with a predetermined characteristic quantity detected from data which is currently input using, for example, a detector for extracting metadata. It is also necessary to provide a buffer for accumulating temporally continuous data for a predetermined period of time.
A technique for allowing an editing operation to be performed more efficiently has been proposed. According to the technique, a display element displays a still image composed of a plurality of slit-like images showing an overall flow of the still image. General outlines of audio data associated with the slit-like images such as levels and types of the data are visually displayed in association with the respective slit-like images forming the still image. Thus, an overall flow of images and sounds can be accurately recognized.
An example of the related art include Japanese Patent No. 3158291 (Patent Document 1).